Blackberry – the company, not the phone – has had its fair share of troubles ever since the iPhone launched back in 2007.

As Apple’s gadget sold by the shedload, Blackberry – the phone, not the company – lost its crown as the king of smartphones. Less than stellar new models, delays to the Blackberry OS update and the ill-starred Playbook tablet didn’t help.

The Blackberry Classic hopes to change that by doing what made Blackberries so popular in the first place.

It’s deliberately reminiscent of the ‘Crackberries’ that used to dominate public and private sector organisations as well as secondary school playgrounds. The hardware QWERTY keyboard is back, and while the screen is just 3.5 inches that’s more than enough for business email, instant messaging and the odd bit of web browsing.

It’s not completely retro, though: the screen is a touchscreen and there’s a decent 8 megapixel camera there too.

3.5 inch screen (Picture: Blackberry)

The classic is the second interesting new phone from Blackberry. The square Passport looks like nothing else around and once again combines touchscreen and hardware keyboard to good effect.

Is this the beginning of Blackberry’s fight back?

Yes and no.

Blackberry has, or perhaps had, two key markets: businesses and young people. The former loved the enterprise features such as secure email and easy management, while the latter loved Blackberry Messenger (BBM), which offered free chat.

Now, though, rivals offer similar and arguably better options to both markets. iPhones have been deemed good enough for the US government and the likes of WhatsApp and other chat services have become massive on Android devices.

We’re inclined to agree with Carolina Milanesi, an analyst for Kantar Worldpanel who told the BBC: ‘This is more about avoiding more people leaving [the platform] than necessarily winning many over. I have a hard time thinking that people who grew up on touch[screens] will see this as an exciting retro trend and embrace it.’